Commercially-available devices for unattended gamma-ray detection and spectrometry commonly have relatively high power requirements and contain expensive components. The high power consumption and cost renders most of the commercially-available, gamma-ray sensors and spectrometers unsuitable for long-term, unattended radiation detection and spectrometry. For example, typical sensors or spectrometers utilizing scintillators or room-temperature semiconductors as detectors must constantly draw power to record the energy of each incident event since the pulse processing electronics in most of these detectors must be “always on.” Furthermore, the components in these sensors can be prohibitively expensive for one-time use and/or large-scale deployment in most, if not all, applications.
While OSL materials have been used in environmental radiation dosimetry for years, and have recently gained widespread use in personnel dosimetry, in the aforementioned dosimetry modes, OSL cannot provide spectroscopy information nor would it serve as an effective, long-term, remote radiation sensor. Thus, a need for zero-power to ultra-low-power, OSL-based sensors and spectrometers for long-term, unattended radiation monitoring exists.